Archive for December, 2004

I don’t post much about politics here. If you want to be informed about the world read the papers or similar. If you want to know what I think then call to my house. Bring beer.

In any case Danny and Darren would probably just clog the comments in a wierd authoritarian left “do as I say” vs authoritarian right “do as I think” way, switching sides arbitrarily and capriciously as they found themselves on the losing side of argument after argument.

Having said all that; this was posted at Crooked Timber and its worth reading at a number of levels.

“The real threat to the life of the nation”

Posted by Chris

From Lord Hoffmann’s remarks in the judgement by the House of Lords (PDF, 102 pages) that the British government is wrong to detain foreign terrorist suspects indefinitely without trial :

This is a nation which has been tested in adversity, which has survived physical destruction and catastrophic loss of life. I do not underestimate the ability of fanatical groups of terrorists to kill and destroy, but they do not threaten the life of the nation. Whether we would survive Hitler hung in the balance, but there is no doubt that we shall survive Al-Qaeda. The Spanish people have not said that what happened in Madrid, hideous crime as it was, threatened the life of their nation. Their legendary pride would not allow it. Terrorist violence, serious as it is, does not threaten our institutions of government or our existence as a civil community….

[S]uch a power in any form is not compatible with our constitution. The real threat to the life of the nation, in the sense of a people living in accordance with its traditional laws and political values, comes not from terrorism but from laws such as these. That is the true measure of what terrorism may achieve. It is for Parliament to decide whether to give the terrorists such a victory.

And if we can’t depend on Parliament to decide whether or not to give the terrorists a victory, at least we can always depend on Ken MacLeod

The strapline for The Execution Channel is ‘The War on Terror is over. Terror won.’

San Lorenzo is a really really reallly good Italian Restaurant most of us ended up having Filetto alla Siciliana – Fillet Steak cooked with black olives, capers and auberguines and a touch of spicy tomato sauce. And a few bottles of Barbera Del Monferrato D.O.C. were consumed as well.

Google creates and retains several caches of all Word documents that you are working on, so that you can go back and see earlier versions, and, if necessary, cut and paste old material that has somehow gone missing back into your document. It’s not an ideal solution (you lose formatting etc) – but it beats the hell out of having to rewrite something that you had already spent a lot of time on.

In general we are a mixed shop. A lot of us use Firefox/Mozilla/Latex etc but it is impossible to get away from MS office and all the associated crashes and pain and grief. So something that makes using MS more bearable is good.

Of course something that searches and indexes Thunderbird email and text files and PDFs while at the same time providing some caching/emergency save capabilities for everything would be better.

Or better yet a decent operating system that supported multiple file versions seamlessly out of the box.

It was on to the New York Public Library, where several hundred Santas gathered on the front steps shouting: “Santa wants a beer! Santa wants a beer!”

One woman turned to her husband with a frown. “This,” she said, “is really going to mess up the kids.”

There was a dicey moment when two traffic officers gave Santa Claus the eye as he and 300 pals crossed 42nd Street at the Avenue of the Americas. A Santa in the vanguard told the officers a few more Santas would be coming in their wake.

“Whose streets?” one Claus chanted. “Santa’s streets!” the crowd called back

What else can you expect from a man, who amongst other things is the patron saint of butchers, bakers and candle makers. As well as murderers, thieves, pawnbrokers, prostitutes, unmarried women and virgins!!!